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Common belief has it that airman Franz Von Werra was the only German to make it back to the Fatherland after escaping from a British PoW camp.

His story was immortalised in the 1957 film The One That Got Away starring Hardy Kruger.

But, although Von Werra escaped, he was recaptured in Britain and flown to a PoW camp in Canada from where he fled and travelled back to Germany.

Author Anton Rippon said: "Pluschow was an astonishing character, not least because he was the only German PoW ever to successfully escape from the UK during both world wars.

"The Germans kept him out of the war after his escape. They didn't want him to run the risk of him being re-captured or even killed, he was more use to them to be around from a propaganda point of view.

"But when the war ended he was a lost soul. He went from being a hero to yesterday's man as the rest of Germany was too busy trying to survive after being defeated.

"His escape was hardly known of in Britain. The authorities didn't exactly make big news of it at the time and there is no point of reference of him in this country ever since."

Pluschow was 28 when the First World War broke out. At the time he was part of the German flying corps stationed in a German colony in China.

Japan declared war on Germany and Pluschow flew in a single-seat Rumpler Taube plane to neutral China while under heavy fire from the Royal Navy.

He obtained a false passport in the name of E.F McGarvin and boarded the SS Mongolia which left Shanghai to San Francisco on December 5, 1914.

He travelled across neutral America and obtained another false passport that proclaimed him to be Swiss national Ernst Smith.

In February 1915 he sailed from New York to British controlled Gibralter on an Italian passenger steamer.

He talked his way past a Royal Naval officer but was caught out by the suspicious interpreter.

Along with other captured Germans, Pluschow was shipped to Plymouth and then on to the PoW camp at Donington Hall, where he arrived in May 1915.

On July 4 he and fellow prisoner Oskar Trefftz broke out by climbing over two 9ft barbed wire fences and walked 15 miles to Derby where they caught a train to London.

By the next morning the men's escape was featured in the Daily Sketch newspaper with both names and descriptions of the smartly-dressed pair.

They went their separate ways but Trefftz was recaptured at Millwall Docks.

Realising he had to alter his appearance, Pluschow removed his smart tie and handed his coat in at the cloakroom at Blackfriars station.

As he handed the garment over the attendant asked him 'What name is it?'

Without thinking Pluschow replied in German 'meinen' (mine). Luckily, the attendant wasn't paying attention and wrote 'Mr Mine' on the receipt.

The German then used scraped-up coal dust, boot polish and Vaseline to change his fair hair to greasy black and covered himself in soot to make him appear as a dock worker.

He wondered around the docks and on July 7 he overheard a conversation about a Dutch ship due in at Tilbury.

He caught a train to the Essex port and, while he waited for the ship, he visited a local eatery which is where he enjoyed another slice of luck.

Without realising, Pluschow had entered a private members club and the proprietor asked for his identity papers. He called himself Mr Mine and paid three shillings to join.

He later swum into the Thames in a bid to reach a rowing boat to take him out to the moored ship but the current was too strong and he was washed ashore exhausted.

He then spent four more days and nights making several attempts to row to the vessel before he was able to climb up a thick mooring rope and stow away in a lifeboat.

When the vessel, the Prinses Juliana, docked at Flushing in Holland, he melted into the crowd of passengers before sneaking out through a door marked private.

He was challenged by a Dutch policeman on the train from Flushing to Germany and, fortuitously, was allowed to carry on his journey despite having no identity papers.